There are two things that are very clear in our house…
1) The girls are not ready for toilet training (or learning as some people like to call it)
2) The girls are not even close to ready to understand time outs.

With the second one pretty obvious, John and I were forced to relax. I would say that for the most part we aren’t what you’d call uptight parents but on Friday I was pushed to my limits. On Saturday the girls put on the same climbing show for their dad and his reaction was pretty much the same as mine. We talked about it at length and decided that we need to relax. We even managed to figure out the obvious - that us freaking out over them climbing was making them want to do it more. It’s amazing how freaking out can blind you from the obvious.

Here’s the plan we came up with. The girls have one of those plastic houses (that we keep in our living room rather than the backyard) and we decided it was time for us to add on the slide. The plan being it would be something they could climb that they were actually allowed to climb. They love it. We are also letting them climb on the couch. If they stand up we just take them down and calmly tell them they are not allowed to stand on the couch. Does it work everytime…no, but it’s better. They are stil not allowed to climb over the ceramic tile. I don’t care if we’re too uptight about that, until they learn to listen and be careful they are only allowed to climb in the carpeted areas.